Sourdoughs of Carcosa

Alchemy, in the D&D sense, is practically unknown on Carcosa. Potions generally do not exist. What fills the same niche is baking - a complex, spiritual and potentially dangerous practice.

Fungi on Carcosa are imbued with magical properties, particularly the brain-parasitic fungi from Yuggoth. Another branch of the same family tree (or family mycelium, rather) are the magical yeasts. Baker-shamans jealously guard their yeast starters, passing them down through generations. Under rare moons they come together in a bakersmoot, to trade and breed new strains.

On Earth, wheat has had an incredible impact on human culture. Arguably, wheat domesticated humans rather than the other way around. Some ancient alien theorists even speculate that emmer wheat was given to humans by extraterrestrials to jump-start agrarian civilisation. But on Carcosa, wheat is rare. Most human tribes are hunter-gatherers or fungal agriculturalists. Wild wheatfields grow only in remote locations, and those who know them keep them secret.

Yeasts and wheat come together in the alchemical ritual of baking. The resulting loaves can be consumed for a variety of effects, depending on the particular strain of yeast. Unlike potions, loaves take around 10 minutes to consume and are typically shared between a group of characters. Here are six samples:

1. Purple Nutbread. Made from kamut wheat, nuts and the yeast strain "The Incomparable Scion". Those who eat this bread together will be fused into a fleshy monstrosity, with all the abilities of all characters plus 1d6 beneficial mutations. They will dissolve from each other under the new moon, although sometimes ending up with mismatched limbs, eyes, etc.

2. Loaf of Fealty. Orange bread made from spelt and the yeast strain "Son and Daughter". To activate this bread, one person must break the loaf and drip their blood onto it. Those who eat the bread become bound to serve the one whose blood was offered. The eaters grow stronger, faster and more hale, while the blood-offerer becomes weak and sickly in proportion. These effects are permanent.

3. Cavitaceous Loaf. Pale grey bread, made from einkorn wheat and the yeast strain "Lacuna". Looking into a slice caused disorientation; there seem to be more holes than there should be room for. Eating it temporarily grants the ability to see round holes in all solid objects. Allows one to shoot enemies through walls, extract organs without breaking the skin, or hide objects in places where nobody else can reach them. Some shamans have gone mad after heavy use, and just before disappearing, raved about "the little ones" and referred to the extradimensional holes as "burrows".

4. Bone Bread. Made from emmer wheat, bone powder, and the yeast strain "Knowing the Gate". The eaters will temporarily gain the powers and knowledge of whatever creature's bones were used in the baking. Mixing different bones together risks terrible psychic scarring.

5. Jale Rye. Made from rye, jale lotus seeds, and the yeast strain "The Eleventh Eye". The baker pours their thoughts into the bread, encoding a specific vision in each loaf. Whoever eats the loaf experiences the vision. Expert bakers can create complex psychic realms. All who partake of the bread can explore them together.

6. Azure Purgative. Blue bread with dolm mould in its cavities. Made from emmer wheat and the yeast strain "Dolm Retriever". All who eat this bread will vomit copiously. Curses, enchantments, parasites and memorised spells will be purged from the body and thrown up. Curses typically manifest as bezoars or unpleasant polyps. The curse can then be transferred to another if they consume its physical manifestation.

It's said that potions are unknown, but this is not entirely true. A few shamans have developed what we would call a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast, and which they more bluntly call "the infected fungus". They use this to create liquids with magical properties similar to the breads--a haunted kombucha for the wastes of Carcosa.

Towards a High-Level Dungeon Crawl with Muta-Metal & Lumina

Heather Hudson

Muta-Metal: This metallic liquid responds to human thought. Concentrate and you can permanently shape it into whatever form you desire. One vial of muta-metal could become a grappling hook, a sword, a set of lockpicks, a roll of iron spikes, or even a wire cable extending up to 50'. It can be poured inside things and then hardened to form a seal (great for locking doors) and it can be magnetised. With several vials of muta-metal, it is possible to create improvised mechanisms, traps, tripwires and so on.

Muta-metal is available in most towns. It is prized by adventurers but shunned by common folk because of its transient nature: after a few days, the hardened muta-metal rusts away to nothing.

Design-wise, I hope this item will encourage creative play and improvisation, with less focus on pre-planning the characters' inventory. This may seem like a minor variation on the theme of 'Quantum Adventuring Gear' as seen in Dungeon World and various other games. However, I've found that Dungeon World's Adventuring Gear mechanic is generally used to handwave things that the play group isn't interested in. "Yeah, of course I have some rope." Muta-metal, on the other hand, presents itself not as a shortcut but as a toy; hopefully, it will encourage improvisation rather than skimming over it.

Pyeongjun Park

Lumina: True dungeons are not just holes in the ground; they are places where a foreign plane intersects with our own. The environment in such 'Dungeon Fields' is inimical to human life. Even when there is light to see by, the air is filled with a miasma that distorts and dims everything. In the face of this miasma, humans quickly sicken and die (or worse). The only thing that counteracts its effects is Lumina -- the eternal blue flame, given to humanity by the gods themselves.

Adventurers descend into the Dungeon Field with jars of Lumina to fuel their lanterns. While the flame lasts, it not only provides light but can also be used to ward off monsters and burn away corruption. but slowly the miasma wears the Lumina down, and snuffs each flame one by one.

Replacing torches with a magical flame makes their role in the game economy more explicit, while thematically moving things up the spectrum from low fantasy to high fantasy. Letting players expend Lumina to drive off monsters will make them more aware of how many they have left. The miasma offers a solution to the problem of "What to do if the PCs actually run out of light?" Instead of blundering around in the dark, the players are faced with a nightmarish gauntlet-run back to the surface, beset by monsters and by progressively worse penalties from miasma sickness.

These two items, along with the Alchemist from my last blog post, have been kicking around in my head as part of some hypothetical high-level anime-flavoured megadungeon. In each case I'm thinking about how to retain the fun elements of a hardscrabble OSR dungeon crawl, but with a different aesthetic.

Mysterious Minerals

Bored of giving your players treasure made out of gold, diamonds, rubies, etc? Here are some more obscure minerals and gems with suggestions for how they might be worked into treasures.

 Azurite:
1. Perfect blue discs used as lip-plates by subterranean cultures
2. powder ground up and used as eyeshadow, kept in gold snuff box
3. blue moss-like crystals grown around a skull before the skull is dissolved away, leaving only the brittle blue cast
4. blue disc set into brass plate. Look closely at the blue and you will see a map of the stars

Cerussite:
1. Lattice trimmed by immortal topiarists into a perfect Sierpinski triangle
2. Miniature crystal tree with carved obsidian rooks
3. Crystal 'feather' forms the end of an ornamental quill

 Cornetite:
1. Bulky ceremonial epaulettes with blue 'flowers' growing on them
2. Fractal sphere run through with non-Euclidean tubes that bend light by 90 degrees
3. Golden idol of storm god with cornetite 'clouds' spilling out from his fanged mouth

 Fossiliferous limestone:
1. Framed slice of stone artfully depicts the transition into an age of mass extinction
2. Set of spiral-shaped stone bowls intended for eating shellfish
3. Stone box designed for interring the severed head of an enemy, symbolically consigning them to extinction
 

 Malachite:
1. Slices of crystal contain delicate bands that record the songs of the vanished whales of the earth
2.  Polished sphere intended for use as a false eye
3.  Stone dagger with rippled blade

 Mesolite:
1. Spherical pom-pom bauble dangling from thin cord
2. Abrasive pad with silver handle, used for exfoliation by decadent nobles
3. Ceremonial wig attached to grimacing demonic mask
4.  Tiny diorama of snowbound valley with carved wooden figurines representing quasi-historical battle

 Meta-autunite: 
1.  Squat, primitive statuette of ancient fertility goddess
2.  Ceremonial club used for bludgeoning sacrificial victims

 Moss Agate:
1. Semi-translucent stone that lines up with landscape to reveal ley lines. Carvings on base gives clues about where to stand
2.  Polished cube containing 3D image of a floating island
3. Sword with jewel in pommel. Moss design continues along crossguard and is etched into the blade

 Pyrite:
1. Ceremonial shield. Far too heavy for practical use, but does deflect beam attacks.
2. Irrational Rubik's cube/puzzle-box that can only be solved by the insane
3. Cubic wreath, originally hung around the necks of victorious generals
4. Brutalist throne

Secret Santicorn: The Alchemist's Basement

Tristan Tanner from the Bogeyman's Cave asked for "a table of odd potions found in an alchemist's basement" as his Santicorn present. Hi Tristan! I tried to give the potions some flavour of "real" alchemy. Hope you like them.

1. Vitreous, honey-coloured liquid, smells faintly of burning. Failed attempt at an elixir of life. Pour this potion on any surface and living, immortal cancers will grow there, blooming like mandelbulbs. Stone grows stone cancers, flesh grows flesh, and so on. One flask of the potion is enough to fill a 10' wide corridor with growth. Drinking this potion will turn the imbiber into a calcinated lump of immortal flesh.

2. Hissing, bubbling grey liquid. Failed attempt at universal solvent. When this potion is poured over an object, the object's borders become blurry and diffuse, allowing it to pass through other solid objects. As the effect fades, the object solidifies, leaving it fused with whatever it was stuck inside of. Chimeras can be created in this way. Multiple sentient beings fused together will form a single mind with all of their memories and personalities blended together.

3. Inky black liquid, greasy, with an eerie blue-purple depth to its colour. Failed attempt to promote the alchemical process of nigredo (putrefaction). Applied to living matter, it causes accelerated aging. Applied to dead matter, it causes rapid decomposition, turning corpses into dust within less than a minute. Drinking it causes a violent purge: make a save vs. poison, on a failure age 3d10 years, but either way you will vomit up all diseases and curses that currently afflict you.

4. Translucent white liquid, glows faintly, consistency of melted butter. Failed attempt to promote the alchemical process of albedo (separation into opposites). Pouring this potion over an object divides it into two phantom copies, one of which only exists in light, the other only in darkness. Drinking this potion causes the imbiber to see their animus or anima: a shadowy doppelganger with reversed gender. Nobody else can see the animus. Make a reaction roll to see if the animus is friendly or hostile. If it is charmed or defeated in battle, it will answer one question. It knows everything that is known by any creature of the same species.

5. Yellow liquid, glitters like gold when held up to the light. Failed attempt to promote the alchemical process of xanthosis (transmutation). Pour this liquid over lead and it will turn into an unstable form of gold. 1000gp worth of gold can be created with one potion. The gold reacts to sunlight, decaying into fractal honeycombs and then bursting into flame. Drinking this potion causes the subject to defecate 1000gp worth of unstable gold over the course of seven days.

6. Red liquid, consistency of oobleck. Failed attempt to promote the alchemical process of rubedo (perfection). Pour this liquid over any object and it will turn into the platonic ideal of that object. Such objects are too real for the human brain to be comfortable with them. All rolls are at -2 while in the presence of such an object. If a character drinks this potion it will make their soul perfect. At first there will be little noticeable change, except that they seem highly charismatic, graceful, enlightened and rational. Gradually they will begin to feel disgust at the flawed natures of all other humans. They will feel it is a moral duty to treat others to the same perfection that they have experienced. To this end they will create more of the red potion (which they instinctively know how to make) and administer it to others by any means necessary - persuasion, subterfuge or force. They will not stop until everyone and everything is perfect.